AnoHana – Review

First off, my prediction was right, so I win teh internets. Second this is a pretty damn good series.

In a nutshell, this series is about a group of friends who were together as kids, but drifted apart as they grew older. This split was caused by the death of one of the people in their group, Menma. Because of her death (as well as his mother’s) the main character, called Jintan, becomes a hikikomori as he grows older. Now in his teens, something of a ghost of Menma manifests itself to Jintan, who now has completely withdrawn from the world. Menma tells Jintan that she remembers having a wish before, but she can’t remember what it is now. The rest of the show is then devoted to Jintan and his friends trying to find out what it was. The series doesn’t really have a linear plot, but rather revolves around the relationships of the main characters: Jintan, Poppo, Anaru, Menma,Yukiatsu, and Tsuruko. As they try to grant Menma’s one wish (whatever that may be) more of their backstory and relationships are revealed.

While some things that you find out about are obvious and contrived, others are genuinely interestig; Yukiatsu especially. Obviously I can’t say too much about the characters, because that’s the whole story, but I will say that I was pretty impressed how they actually made it make sense that all of their relationships were basically tied to Menma, and how it actually makes since that they didn’t remain friends after she died. Although I did think that it was kind of slow to take off, eventually it did keep my interest and make me wonder what was going on with all of these characters. Also, while you may think that it shows how much easier children can get along than adults and teens, that’s a load, because the same problems they had when they were younger were the one’s they had to solve as adults. The only problem is that it does make them seem kind of juvenile, and it makes you wonder why some seven year old kid couldn’t get over a crush ten years later.

The animations was done by A-1 Pictures, and if you don’t know them, they’re also doing Blue Exorcist (weird combo huh?). Anyway, they did a great job on the animation for this show, although nothing really stands out too much, it’s way above the rest of the curb of animation in these modern days. I also really like the opening, and is actually one of the few that I always watched. So, if you like character driven tragedy stuff, this is all yours. Although there really isn’t anything groundbreaking here, what is there is executed very well.